What are the fifty states, and how did the United States get so big?
Picture a country that started out small and finicky, hugging one ocean like a kid who won't go past the shallow end. That was the United States once — just thirteen colonies in a row along the Atlantic coast. Today it's fifty states sprawled across a whole continent, with a couple of pieces that hopped right off the mainland. So how did a skinny coastal strip turn into one of the biggest countries on Earth? It grew, piece by piece, like a quilt sewn over two hundred years.
It began in 1776, when thirteen British colonies decided they'd rather run themselves. They won their independence and became the first thirteen states — names like Virginia, Massachusetts, and Georgia, all lined up along the Atlantic. Back then, the rest of the continent belonged to other nations, or to Native peoples who had lived there for thousands of years. The new country was real, but it was also rather small and out of breath.
